It sounds too contrived to work: a film that plays out the venerable switched-at-birth plotline
against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But, in
The Other Son, French writer-director Lorraine Levy generally succeeds in creating a
compelling, humanistic family drama, even if some viewers might reject the final note of
optimism.

Joseph (Jules Sitruk) is an 18-year-old who lives in Tel Aviv with his French mother (Emmanuelle
Devos), a doctor, and Israeli father (Pascal Elb), an army officer. A blood test reveals that he
can’t be the couple’s biological son. During the chaos of the Gulf War, it turns out, he was
switched with Yacine (played as a teen by Mehdi Dehbi), the newborn son of a Palestinian man
(Khalifa Natour), an engineer forced to earn his living as a car mechanic, and his wife (Areen
Omari).

Levy and her co-writer, Nathalie Saugeon, are less interested in harping on Middle Eastern
politics than in examining how the boys and their families sort out the news. Awkward visits are
paid across the border, while each family works internally to make sense of the news that they have
been harboring a traditional “enemy.”

The two fathers (and Joseph’s biological older brother) have the hardest time dealing with the
news. Not that the two young men aren’t profoundly affected: Joseph is sadly informed by his rabbi
that he isn’t Jewish but is welcome to convert, and the Palestinian couple’s older son is incensed
to learn that his family has unwittingly been harboring a Jew. Still, the teenagers eventually seem
to rise above it more quickly than the others.

Not all of
The Other Son is totally convincing. We learn that Joseph is musically inclined, it turns
out, just like his biological father, and Yacine has been studying in Paris on a pre-med track and
following his mom’s career track. There are other heavy-handed plot points, and some overwrought
dialogue as well.

What counts most, though, is the film’s conviction that decency is possible under extremely
disturbing circumstance, which the actors clearly seem to understand. Levy gets expectedly strong
work from the veteran Devos, and outstanding performances from Sitruk and Dehbi.

The young men make a convincing case that their characters, who might easily have succumbed to
the devastating news, are well on their way to finding a future beyond division and despair.